Crome Yellow - by Aldous Huxley

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

For some mysterious reason, 1984 by George Orwell, has been one of the most downloaded books over the last few weeks. Unfortunately we won't be featuring Orwell books for about another decade when they start to pass out of copyright - pending no further copyright legislation.

Therefore I will turn to another writer with his face turned to the future, Aldous Huxley and his 1921 novel, Crome Yellow.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  

 The novel is a satire on the English "house party" novel.  (No, not the Agatha Christie murdered guests variety.)

Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed. All the trains— the few that there were— stopped at all the stations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water. Camlet was where he always got out, leaving the train to creep indolently onward, goodness only knew whither, into the green heart of England.

Hmmm, let's follow!

"Hullo," she said, looking up. "I'd forgotten you were coming."

"Well, here I am, I'm afraid," said Denis deprecatingly. "I'm awfully sorry."

I think it would be sad to show up at a country house and be a surprise, but I am not likely to put that to the test.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com

Hair Breadth Escapes Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and so forth - by T.S. Arthur

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

Sometimes it is the title that hooks you and drags you into a book.  A title such as Hair Breadth Escapes Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. This is probably the only book every written with two etceteras in the title.  The book is by Timothy Shay Arthur, an American writer.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)

This is a non-fiction book published in 1889, a few years after Arthur's death.  It looks and reads like non-fiction, but I had to check because he wrote perhaps 100 novels and some in the voice of women. With all those novels, you might think he had no time for non-fiction . .  .

Bangs was sitting up in bed, busily engaged in putting on his breeches, which luckily he had put under his pillow. The rest of his own clothes, and those of his friends, were swimming about the cabin, saturated with water. Gelid, who during all the tumult had slept soundly, was now awake. He put one of his legs out of bed, with a view of rising, and plunged it into the water.

 “Heavens! Wagtail,” he exclaimed, “the cabin is full of water––we are sinking! Ah! it is deuced hard to be drowned in this puddle, like potatoes in a tub.”

“Captain, captain,” cried Bangs, looking over the side of his bed, “did you ever see the like of that? There, just under your light––look at it; why it’s a bird’s nest, with a thrush in it, swimming about.” “Damn your bird’s nest,” growled little Pepperpot, “by Jove, it’s my wig with a live rat in it.”

Funny, in a creepy way!

I served as assistant pilot on board the merchant vessel Dolphin, bound from Jamaica for London, which had already doubled the southern point of the Island of Cuba, favored by the wind, when one afternoon, I suddenly observed a very suspicious-looking schooner bearing down upon us from the coast. I climbed the mast, with my spy glass, and became convinced that it was a pirate. I directed the captain, who was taking his siesta, to be awaked instantly, showed him the craft, and advised him to alter our course, that we might avoid her. The captain, a man of unfortunate temper, whose principal traits of character were arrogance, avarice, and obstinacy, scorned my counsel, and insisted that we had nothing to fear, as we were perfectly well protected by the English flag.

This is an edited non-fiction collection.  It is clear from the author's biography that he never sailed the seas, although he called the port of Baltimore home.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com

Way of the Lawless - by Max Brand

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

Yeehaw!  Max Brand is free on Classic Kindle. Unlike other Western writers who place their cowboys before the “decline” of the West, Brand's characters in Way of the Lawless (1921) confront the new world head on. (US Edition)  (UK Edition) 

Pat Gregg was leaving the saloon; he was on his horse, but he sat the saddle slanting, and his head was turned to give the farewell word to several figures who bulged through the door of the saloon. For that reason, as well as because of the fumes in his brain, he did not hear the coming of the automobile. His friends from the saloon yelled a warning, but he evidently thought it some jest, as he waved his hand with a grin of appreciation. The big car was coming, rocking with its speed; it was too late now to stop that flying mass of metal.

But not everything has changed:

“Be on your way, Buck. Get out of town, and get out of trouble. My boy hears you been talkin’ about him, and he allows as how he’ll get you. He’s out for you now.”

The fumes cleared sufficiently from Buck Heath’s mind to allow him to remember that Jasper Lanning’s boy was no other than the milk-blooded Andy. He told Jasper to lead his boy on. There was a reception committee waiting for him there in the person of one Buck Heath.

“Don’t be a fool, Buck,” said Jasper, glancing over his shoulder. “Don’t you know that Andy’s a crazy, man-killin’ fool when he gets started? And he’s out for blood now. You just slide out of town and come back when his blood’s cooled down.”

Buck Heath took another drink from the bottle in his pocket, and then regarded Jasper moodily. “Partner,” he declared gloomily, putting his hand on the shoulder of Jasper, “maybe Andy’s a man-eater, but I’m a regular Andy-eater, and here’s the place where I go and get my feed. Lemme loose!”

Don’t you want to know what happens? Kick up your boots and sit a spell with Max Brand.

(Western readers may know Max Brand was the pen name of American Frederick Faust. What they may not know is Faust was a war correspondent killed in Italy by shrapnel during WWII.)

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com

           

 

The Good Soldier - by Ford Maddox Ford

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

THIS is the saddest story I have ever heard.

How could I turn down using a famous first line?  I love it when the great classics come out free on Kindle.  The Good Soldier is a 1915 novel by English writer, Ford Maddox Ford. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  

The novel was published after the war and the author suggested the title to his publisher as a joke about how to title a best seller. But there is a soldier in the book, so the cynical title was used.

Graham Greene said it was one of the greatest 20th century novels, in part because it is an experimental work of literary modernism, famous for its unreliable narrator.  It is about an English couple and an American couple; written on the eve of WWI; about the decline of British society.

THIS is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy— or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothing whatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows.

This sounds like a book that will be revealing to my readers on both sides of the Atlantic!  Of course, I think that about all the books I recommend, or I would not suggest them.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com